Blogging Tips by Gaylord Focker: How to Make Your Blog Sticky
Posted by Bill Faeth on Fri, Jun 15, 2012 @ 10:12 AM
Add Some Gel to your Blog
If you are over 30 then you have probably seen or at least heard of the movie, There's Something About Mary. If you haven't, then you are missing out and should check it out. It is too funny and you will understand the picture to the right, who Gaylord Focker is, and how Cameron Diaz's hair stood so tall.
You are probably thinking that this has nothing to do with blogging, well your right to an extent, but if you know the movie you should get it.
One of the goals that you should have as a blogger is to migrate the reader into your site from your blog. This exposes them to more information about the products and services you offer and increases your opportunity to connect and potentially make a sale of some sort. The more we expose our blog readers to "value added" content the stickier our blog becomes.
Internal Links
The first place to add stickiness is with internal links in the content of your blog post. And link a lot. We have done a poor job so far in this post with internal links, but that is about to change as we give you some examples below. These examples are also relevant to improving your blogging and content creation skills, so take advantage and check them out. You don't need to read the entire article. Just scan them and bookmark them to Digg, Delicious, or whatever bookmarking site you use for future reference.
A great example of internal linking is Wikipedia, as they link like crazy. Take a quick look at There's Somthing About Mary Wikipedia page for an example. Have you ever started reading a blog and then clicked on a interesting link and started reading that article? Then you found another great eye catching link like Business Blogging Mistakes Not To Make and the next thing you know 30 mins to an hour has gone by reading great content.
Meals and Snacks
We have talked about this before so we will keep it brief. When blogging you have meals - long posts like this one that are hopefully informative and interesting (all blogs should be both), but you also need snacks. Snacks are shorter posts that can include curated content, lists, videos, etc. Here is the Top 25 Online Marketing SEO, & Social Media Blogs list. This is a snack article that provides valuable resources to the reader, but is also easy to curate.
Your readers don't have enough time to eat dinner with you on every post so mix in some snacks on occasion. Just be sure to keep the information valuable.
Give Your Reader More
This is a similar strategy to internal linking, but the placement is different. Include Calls to Action in the sidebar of your blog. You can see we have three CTA's in our right sidebar; The Social Media Tune Up, SEO for Blogging Checklist, and a Free Content Calendar. Adding valuable CTA's will add to your stickiness.
Now at the bottom of your blog, below your CTA, add some additional content. You will see that have four articles at the bottom of this post for you to click on hopefully add value to what you are looking for. Once again this adds value and, extends time on site, gets you deeper into our website, and create's stickiness. The CTA's should also generate leads which is another topic.
What do you do to make your blog stickier? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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